It’s August!

As promised, I’ve donned my apron and I’m excited to get to cooking my “Best of” food storage recipes!  My goal is to get these recipes prepared and posted just as quickly as I can so that you can move on to choosing which ones are going to be keepers in your book.  On top of Main Meal recipes, I’ll also be posting my family’s favorite 100% food storage Breakfasts  as well as our favorite Breads, Snacks and Desserts!  My kiddos are going to be happy and well fed.

To get this done within the time frame I’m going for I’m going to have a busy schedule to keep!  For the next 7 – 8 months, I’m just telling you now, you won’t want to miss a single thing!!  If you haven’t done so already, be sure to SUBSCRIBE (it’s free!) so that you can be notified by email just as soon as the newest recipe pops up.  I’ve also started a facebook page and will be posting the recipes there as well.

Now…let’s crack open the cookbook and get started!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chicken Pot Pie

Print the recipe card!  chicken pot pie

6-8 servings

Recipe courtesy of www.kneadfulthingsnow.com

Okay, so I was feeling a little bit daring today.  My new sun oven was delivered while I was away on vacation and I just had to try out using it!  I’m excited to get to add this recipe to my “tested and tried” sun oven meals if the power is out.

Prep Time: active prep time 25 minutes

Cooking Time:  Sun Oven, about an hour

Conventional oven, 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 TBS oil

2 tsp. dried onion

2 cups dehydrated carrots

1/2 cup freeze dried celery

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

1/3 c. flour

2 cups (1 can) chicken broth

3 TBS powdered milk reconstituted with 1 1/2 c. water

2 TBS Cheddar Cheese Powder

1 cup freeze dried potato dices

2 3/4 cups of water to rehydrate veggies

1 cup freeze dried Green Peas

2 cans of canned chicken

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1/4 tsp. thyme

1/4 tsp. celery seed

For the biscuit topping, to save myself some time, I used 2 3/4 cups of  Biscuit Baking Mix  mixed with 2/3 cups milk (using my powdered milk) that I’d already made.  Bisquick I’m sure would work too.

Instructions:

In a skillet heat approximately 1 Tbsp oil or butter and saute onions, celery, mushrooms, and garlic. Push the veggies to the sides of the skillet. Add 1/3 cup butter or oil and 1/3 cup flour to the skillet stirring continuously to make a roux. Cook the roux for two minutes. Add broth and milk stir and cook over medium high heat until sauce begins to thicken. Add the cheese, if desired, vegetables, chicken, and spices. Stir to coat.

Place in your choice of crust and bake at 400 degrees until crust is golden and filling is bubbly.  Approx 30 minutes.

Following the directions, your sauce comes together adding broth, milk, cheese powder (2 TBS), spices and two cans of chicken.

Stir and bring to a boil

You’ll need a black baking dish if you are going to be cooking this in a Sun Oven.  Pour sauce and veggies into the baking dish and move on to getting your biscuit dough prepared to lay on top.

Once your biscuit dough is ready, lay it on top and brush with oil.

Bake until done.  Don’t tinker with the oven very much or open up the door while cooking or you’ll let out the heat.  It’ll take atleast an hour to cook, depending on your sun maybe even a little longer.  As soon as the biscuit topping is done you’re ready to pull it out!

A great side dish to keep in your storage is applesauce — this is a tip that I got from my friend Sherida who tried out living on food storage for 6 months.  It’s a quick, no fuss side that supplies Vitamin C as well.

Speaking of Sherida, I’m excited to let you know she’s going to be a guest Tuesday, August 6th on the “All You Need to Know Show” on the Preparedness Radio Network.  If your ready to get motivated and hear what it was like for her to voluntarily feed her family on only what she had in her food storage  click this link!!  She’ll be on live at 1 pm Central or if you can’t make it for the live show you can listen to the recorded version later using this same link.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:

• To use this as a sun oven recipe you need the temperature of your sun oven to be around 300 degrees.  Start early and cook using the peak sun hours of the day.
• • Set up your sun oven 15 minutes ahead of time to heat up, if it’s an overcast day it may take longer.
• • Reconstitute your powdered milk, if that’s what you’re using, well  before beginning the recipe (you could also use canned milk).  You don’t want to get half way through and realize that your milk isn’t ready to go when you need it!
• • Rehydrate your veggies before you begin.
  • There are lots of variations you could make w/ this recipe.  You could add mushroooms (as the original recipe calls for) or corn or increase or decrease some of the veggies I used.  It’s all up to what your family likes!

In my book this recipe is used as a:

*Long Term Recipe

*Sun Oven Recipe

*3 month Recipe

As a 3 month recipe I would use stored fresh vegetables.  In this recipe all the veggies are ones that store well except for the peas –those I’d store frozen.  Here are a few posts from one of my favorite preppers about storing vegetables:

Storing celery in tin foil:

http://3monthspreparation.blogspot.com/2010/02/day-16-preserving-produce.html

Using the same trick of wrapping cabbage with tin foil (5th paragraph),  she stored cabbage well in the refrigerator for 3 months:

http://3monthspreparation.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-90-finish-line.html

On storing potatoes (also works with onions, I’ve stored onions 6 months this way), read Crystal’s answer to a question in the comments section as to how she stores her potatoes.

http://3monthspreparation.blogspot.com/2011/01/empty-shelves-in-georgia-indian.html